Climate change is a contemporary global crisis that necessitates pedagogical innovation for the middle school dance classroom. This article describes an integrated design for a dance and science unit. Building on students' kinesthetic abilities, teachers are able to create a unit comprising a series of lessons on bird migrations effected by…

Using an ecofeminist theoretical frame along with critical content analysis of visual images, this article examines the environmental discourse of the picturebook, "Heartbeat," written and illustrated by Evan Turk (2018). In this picturebook, Turk uses the heartbeat, the history, and the song of a whale to draw the reader into a sense of…

In response to growing concern about the increased disconnect between youth and their outdoor environment, this study examines how nature-based citizen science experiences with a local animal (American eels) influence urban adolescents' (high-school students) sense of place in a US city. The juvenile American eel is a unique animal due to its…

This study provides an opportunity for young children to express their thoughts about all matters affecting them based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Accordingly, 20 five-year-old children attending a preschool in Korea participated in this study, reading picture books, including animal matters. I recorded and…

Community and city Facebook pages have proliferated in popularity in the last several years, offering a forum for residents to openly and publicly negotiate relations with urban wildlife, including coyotes. Contemporary shifts in North American coyote geographies (and the concomitant rise in community social media sites) thus open up interesting…

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are tools used to introduce students to authentic participation in science. Several specific CUREs have been shown to benefit students' interest and retention in the biological sciences. Nevertheless, CUREs vary greatly in terms of their context, methodology, and degree of research…

Biodiversity education is widely considered a necessary component of protecting global biodiversity by helping to change harmful attitudes and actions. BioBlitz events, rapid surveys of all living things in a defined area over a set period, are becoming a widely used practice for biodiversity education. The aim of this study was to evaluate the…

This study aimed to develop secondary school seventh-grade students' awareness of natural habitats and the interactions among living things, as well as reveal their views on the problems encountered. The study was designed as a case study, a qualitative perspective and conducted with 64 students from a private school during the 2017-2018 academic…

This dissertation explored the roles schools can play in the successful outcomes of large carnivore or keystone reintroduction projects. Schools are more than centers for knowledge acquisition--they connect their community and disseminate information quickly to a wide audience. This study took place in California's Eastern Sierra Nevada, a…

Upon regaining the right to direct education at the local level, the North Slope Borough (NSB) of Alaska incorporated Inupiat educational philosophies into the educational system. The NSB in partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks established Ilisagvik College, the only tribal college in Alaska. Ilisagvik College seeks to broaden…

In this article , the authors describe an activity in which students in Savannah, Georgia, use handheld GPS devices to record the sightings of bottlenose dolphins, examine spatial data from five pairs of dolphins in the study, and then form hypotheses about the spatial patterns they observe. In the process, they learn not only about the ecology of…

Predator-prey dynamics are an important concept in ecology, often serving as an introduction to the field of community ecology. However, these dynamics are difficult for students to observe directly. We describe a methodology that employs model caterpillars made of clay to estimate rates of predator attack on a prey species. This approach can be…

The Theory of Planned Behavior was used as a framework for investigating recreationists' attitudes, subjective norms, and behavioral control beliefs pertaining to behaviors that reduce the spread of invasive species. A series of focus groups comprised of gardeners, fishers, hunters, and boaters was convened in Oregon, USA. Findings indicate six…

The use of inquiry in life science can be particularly daunting because of the additional management and care living systems require. However, there are some low-maintenance organisms that work well in the classroom. One of these is the common fruit fly, "Drosophila melanogaster." Its small size, low cost, easy availability and maintenance, and…

Freire's influential text, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," relies on both anthropocentric and speciesist arguments to articulate a pedagogy for human liberation. While Freire's anthropocentric understandings of "nature" have been more thoroughly critiqued, less attention has been given to his construction of nonhuman animals, in particular. I argue…